News for the Gulf of Mexico Region

August 8, 2019 — The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council (Gulf Council) developed six amendments to the Fishery Management Plan for Reef Fish Resources in the Gulf of Mexico (Reef Fish FMP) to allow the five Gulf of Mexico states some management authority for private angler red snapper recreational fishing. The Council has transmitted these Amendments to NOAA Fisheries.

NOAA Fisheries requests your comments regarding the changes these Amendments would make to Gulf of Mexico private recreational red snapper management in federal waters. Comments are due by October 7, 2019.

Amendment 50A includes actions that affect all states and Amendments 50B-F analyze actions specific to each Gulf of Mexico state (Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and Texas, respectively).

NOAA Fisheries will also publish a proposed rule to implement these changes and will send another Fishery Bulletin to request comments at that time. Comments on both the amendment and proposed rule will be considered in the final rule.

August 7, 2019 — One of the ways the state plans to rebuild land on the Louisiana coast is by sediment diversions — diverting the silt, sand, and dirty waters of the Mississippi River into the marsh.

For years, many in the commercial fishing industry have claimed that the influx of freshwater funneled through diversions would ruin their industry. Now, some fishers feel they have proof: the damaging impacts of the 2019 Mississippi River Flood.

On a bayou in the St. Bernard Parish town of Yscloskey, George Barisich starts up his shrimp boat.

“Hear that?” he says, as the diesel engine below our feet roars to a start. “That’s the sound we want to hear.”

Barisich says that engine hasn’t gotten much use lately. There is no point in heading into the marsh when there aren’t any shrimp to catch.

“I’m 82 percent off on my brown shrimp,” he says of this season. “Eighty two. And there’s a lot of people just as bad.”

With the new legislative session next in September, conservation groups are pushing for measures at both the state and federal level to ban one of the largest threats to the shark population – the fin trade.

Between 100 million and 200 million sharks are killed every year. An estimated 73 million of those are killed for their fins.

“The shark fin trade is a global market for shark fins,” Trish Albano, a shark researcher at the University of Miami’s Rosensteil School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, told NBC 6 South Florida. “The shark fin is being used to make shark fin soup.”

August 1, 2019 — For years, solar power has been the rallying cry of New Orleans City Council members aiming to chart a more sustainable energy future for New Orleans.

Its advocates have long said that solar panels — which now adorn a smattering of city rooftops and will soon populate a 200-acre site in New Orleans East — are cheaper and better suited to the coastal city than the giant windmills that create energy in other parts of the U.S.

But other renewable energy advocates, federal officials and representatives of the wind-power industry recently told a council committee that wind power ought to get a closer look, even if costs would need to fall sharply to make a wind farm in the Gulf of Mexico a viable future power source for New Orleans.

August 1, 2019 — An independent adjudicator has dismissed nearly all of the objections raised against granting the Atlantic menhaden fishery certification by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC).

Omega Protein, the Houston, Texas-based division of Canada’s Cooke filed for the MSC label for both Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico menhaden fisheries in June 2017 and received a positive recommendation from SAI Global for the Atlantic fishery in March 2019.

But the request also received two objections, one from the Nature Conservancy and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the other by the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TCRP), the Coastal Conservation Association and the American Sportfishing Association.

July 31, 2019 — It’s been routine for fishermen setting sail on the Gulf of Mexico over the past 15 years to stop beside the unmistakable blue boat — always parked in the same spot about a mile east of Pensacola Pass — for a live bait transaction.

Until his last day on earth, you could buzz Tony Barfield on VHF radio channel 11 or pull right up to the beloved bait salesman’s trademark spot on the pass to pick up your cigar minnows or threadfins for the day.

Barfield died July 19 of natural causes at the age of 61. His sister, Becky Stewart, confirmed his passing and said her brother was plagued by heart issues and diabetes in the later part of his life.

None of that diminished Barfield’s work ethic. His service aboard that blue boat was considered invaluable by many in the Pensacola fishing community.

July 29, 2019 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Scientists at the NMFS Southeast Fisheries Science Center’s Galveston Laboratory have prepared the following information on prospects for the 2019 brown shrimp season (July 2019–June 2020) in the western Gulf of Mexico.

According to NOAA fisheries, although local environmental factors (temperature, rainfall amounts, and tidal heights) should have contributed to favorable conditions for brown shrimp recruitment and growth in Texas, freshwater inflow into Galveston Bay (on which the forecast model is based) from the Trinity River watershed resulted in salinities near zero in much of the bay. Subsequently, the availability of suitable nursery habitat was limited to West and Lower Galveston Bay. Likewise, growth may have been affected by the lower salinities.

They add, similarly, early spring temperatures in Louisiana would have suggested favorable conditions for an average production. However, Louisiana was inundated with freshwater runoff due to unprecedented Mississippi River flows this spring. These freshwater events have offset the early spring favorable conditions to a much less favorable environment for brown shrimp production.

Overall, the western Gulf of Mexico could expect an annual brown shrimp production of approximately 40.6 million pounds during the 2019–2020 season.

This story was originally published on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

July 29, 2019 — A federal lawsuit filed last year calling on the National Marine Fisheries Service to assess the impacts of oil and gas development on federally protected species and critical habitat in the Gulf of Mexico ended last week with a settlement agreement under which the service agreed to finish an assessment by November.

Under the Endangered Species Act, the fisheries service is required to gauge the impacts of federally authorized oil and gas operations on species listed as threatened and endangered, as well as habitat designated as critical.

It has been 12 years since the fisheries service did such an analysis of energy development in the Gulf, called a “biological opinion.” That opinion was intended to cover the five-year period from 2007 to 2012.

After the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion in 2010, the Department of Interior requested that the fisheries service update its 2007 opinion, taking the huge resulting oil spill into consideration. The assessment process began in 2013, but an updated opinion still hasn’t been issued.

This month, NOAA Fisheries submitted a report to Congress (PDF, 19 pages) describing the Marine Recreational Information Program’s (MRIP) efforts to explore the suitability of electronic reporting as a method of collecting data from saltwater anglers.

Electronic reporting is a method of data collection that can include smartphones, tablets, and other technologies used to record, send, and store data. In some cases, electronic reporting allows samplers to use tablets instead of paper and pencil to record and submit data collected in the field. In others, electronic reporting allows anglers to record and submit data through a website or mobile device.

Electronic reporting has the potential to reduce data collection costs and improve the quality of reported information, and several states—including Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi—have adopted mandatory or voluntary angler reporting apps. But the challenges associated with using these technologies to collect data from private anglers—especially when anglers are asked to voluntarily report their data through a website or mobile app—have the potential to bias resulting estimates.

Opt-in angler reporting programs can experience low recruitment and retention rates, as well as a tendency for more avid angler to participate. To correct for these and other potential biases, independently conducted shoreside sampling must be used to confirm or correct missing or misfiled angler electronic reports. Shoreside validation is crucial, but adds cost and time to the data collection process. More research will help us understand how angler-submitted electronic data can best supplement the data the MRIP partnership collects through other means.

July 26, 2019 — SEAFOOD NEWS — NMFS is reporting that shrimp landings in the Gulf of Mexico last month were slightly higher than in June last year and also in 2017 — but still below the 17-year historic average.

The Fishery Monitoring Branch of the NMFS Southeast Fisheries Science Center released shrimp landings data from the Gulf of Mexico for June 2019 this week. The data showed June landings of 11.1 million pounds were higher than the 10.9 million pounds in June 2018 and June 2017, the Southern Shrimp Alliance said in a press release.

The 17-year historic average for June is 16.7 million pounds.

Although landings volumes appear to have recovered somewhat in June, the commercial shrimp harvest remains substantially below previous years for the year so far. Roughly 28.6 million pounds of shrimp have been landed in the Gulf of Mexico since January, 34 percent below the 17-year historic average of 43.4 million pounds. It is also the second lowest amount reported for a January-to-June time period since 2002.

For 2019 thus far, the landings in Louisiana,10.5 million pounds, and the west coast of Florida, 2.0 million pounds, are the lowest reported in the historic dataset maintained by the Southern Shrimp Alliance, while landings in Mississippi, 1.1 million pounds, are the second lowest total reported.

Last month, NOAA reported ex-vessel prices for just two count sizes of shrimp landed in the eastern Gulf (west coast of Florida) and just three count sizes of shrimp landed in the northern Gulf (Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi). The ex-vessel prices reported for shrimp landed in the western Gulf (Texas) were roughly in line with the ex-vessel prices reported for the same count sizes in June 2018.

NOAA’s monthly reporting of shrimp landings in the Gulf of Mexico continues to include the disclaimer that the summaries collected or estimated from federal port agents may not reflect individual states’ landings.

As noted, the numbers reported – and the ex-vessel prices that have not been reported – over the last several months by NMFS appear to indicate that port agents may have been unable to collect information in the same manner as they have done historically, the SSA said in the statement.

Ex-vessel prices for 26-30, headless/shell-on shrimp in June show prices roughly the same as the historical averages, but more than $2 a pound less than the high prices reported in June 2014. June ex-vessel prices for U15 shrimp show a general increasing trend for northern Gulf and west coast Florida shrimp but a roller coaster ride for shrimp from the western Gulf. Still, the average ex-vessel price for June for U15 shrimp was $9.52 a pound for both western and northern Gulf shrimp, according to the SSA report.